EMEA > Nordics

The adoption of real-time advertising in the UK and Europe is becoming mainstream. Effective real-time bidding (RTB) campaigns have been running at scale for a number of years, however this buying method is now the first choice for online performance campaigns, and major advertisers are starting to issue RFPs specifically for programmatic media buying and analytics services, something that was unheard of 12 months ago.

The following report was researched and written by Infectious Media using aggregated and anonymised campaign data from Impression Desk. The findings, whilst specific to Infectious Media, represent work carried out for clients spanning all industry sectors with differing objectives, budgets and target audiences, which may be indicative of industry wide trends.

Northern European CPM Hot-Spots

The German-speaking “DACH” countries and the Nordics have the top-valued inventory in Europe, commanding the highest CPM impressions. Austria has come out on top, with Denmark and Finland closely following. In the second tier are Switzerland, Germany, Sweden and Norway.

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SECTION I: PREMIUM & BRANDING IN THE PROGRAMMATIC ERA

KEYNOTE 1: Our first keynote speaker of the day was Neal Mohan, VP of Display Advertising Google, who gave us a presentation titled “Programmatic for the People”.
- Programmatic buying moving from performance to also include brand.
- You get what you measure.
- Let’s get that brand spend away from TV!

PANEL 1: “How are data & technology affecting change in advertising?”
This first panel was moderated by Erich Wasserman, Co-founder & GM, EMEA, MediaMath, with discussion between Curt Hecht, Chief Global Revenue Officer, Weather Channel; Anthony Rhind, Co-CEO, Havas Digital and Sean Cornwall, former MD, eHarmony.

Anthony Rind, Havas: “Know the value, not just the cost of data. What you’re doing with data is improving your accuracy, not providing a 100% hit rate. Clients won’t share their data unless they have absolute trust. Build attribution models based in comparing touchpoints of both converters & non converters, it proves display works.”

Curt Hecht, Weather Channel: “Mobile is the #1 thing I’m focused on. Mobile will make the Weather Channel global.”

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Tanja Sanders is Managing Director, International at myThings.

I love Salmon. This wonderful fish is one of the best ambassadors of Nordic excellence. However, it can also illustrate a case in point I’d like to make regarding the state of display advertising and E-commerce in this region. How so?

Before I go back to maritime culinary delights, let’s inspect an inherent contradiction in the Nordic markets.
On the one hand, e-commerce in the Nordics is booming and slated to account for almost €11bn in revenues per year, the 4th largest in the EU! More than eight in ten Nordic consumers shopped online at least once last year, each spending an average of €675 per annum. Here’s a great infographic illustrating this:

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It’s the biggest data-driven advertising event in Europe. It’s the event that even has its own acronym. ATS London is now in its third year, and the line-up of speakers and content is the best yet. Often copied – A LOT! – but never equalled, ATS London brings together the best in the global online ad industry to discuss the latest trends and developments in the space. And this year is no exception.

It is clear that our industry is moving beyond the mess of the LumaScape to a platform-centric world, and this certainly is one of the key areas being explored by ATS London this year. The full-day programme will be organised into three core themes: brand, application and big data. All of these are effectively shaping the data-driven ad space, and speakers and participants on the day will explore these issues in more depth.

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myThings’ Global Expansion Continues Following Recent $15m Investment

myThings, a global personalised display ad solutions company, announced this week that it has expanded its operations in the U.S. and Latin American markets, in addition to Japan, Turkey, Poland and the Nordics, with the company now operating in 15 markets worldwide. Hand-in-hand with its geographic expansion, the company has recently hired its 100th employee, with a total team growth of 120% in 18 months.

myThings’ strategic expansion decision, especially the opening of offices in the U.S. and Brazil, was a result of growing demand from marketers, particularly in the United States, to extend beyond the industry-focused cost per click (CPC) or view-based models offered by traditional retargeting companies. myThings translates its CPA-driven success to their markets, aiming to enable advertisers to run risk-free campaigns by paying only for actual conversions.

A driving force behind myThings’ expansion is its recent $15m round led by Iris Capital, the manager of the Orange-Publicis Venture Fund, in addition to existing investors Accel Partners, Carmel Ventures, T-Ventures and Viola PE. To date, the company has raised $37m in four rounds of financing.

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Weborama announced yesterday that it was acquiring Datvantage, a data management solution, for an undisclosed figure. The acquisition might well signal the start of a wider consolidation in the European ad tech space. Here Weborama CEO, Alain Levy, and Datvantage’s Co-Founder, Arnaud Caplier, discuss the deal and how it will augment the current pan-Euro data solution offered by Weborama.

For those not accustomed with Datvantage, please explain what the value proposition; what category do they operate in (exchange, DMP, etc)?

Arnaud: Datvantage is a data exchange: it aggregates audience segments from publishers and offers them to audience buyers (advertisers, agencies and networks) to help them target and optimise their campaigns. The Datvantage platform offers DMP capabilities which enable all stakeholders (publishers, agencies and advertisers) to understand and manage monetisation and usage of their data assets.

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RTB and programmatic buying are quite nascent in the Nordics.  At last week’s ATS Stockholm there was much discussion about where to begin and how to edge the region into the forefront of an already established global RTB environment.

INTRO: The day kicked off with an introduction by IAB Sweden (IAB Sverige) CEO, Charlotte Thür who gave us some interesting stats for the Nordics:
- IAB Sweden was founded in September 2008
- For mCommerce sales in select countries in Europe, according to eMarketer.com, Sweden has grown from 1.8% of online sales in 2010 to 7.8% of online sales in 2012

Current ad spend in Sweden is 2.2bn SEK (£19.6m), of which:
- 36% search
- 35% display
- 28% online catalog
- 1% email marketing

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Well we finally passed the date of the ICO amnesty. And no arrests so far. In fact the new “implied consent” interpretation makes the cookie apocalypse soothsayers look a little foolish. The UK looks good for now – but the greater European market cannot be ignored by any company based here. The recent decision for instance by Dutch legislators suggests things are going to get very hairy in the European digital advertising space.

The Dutch Are Going Hardcore On The Explicit Opt-In

We can thank the ICO for taking the sensible decision of implementing implied consent but spare a thought for our Dutch friends. ExchangeWire attended a recent IAB event in the Netherlands on automated ad trading, and spoke to some senior industry leaders about the implications of hard opt-in for all cookies set on websites in the Netherlands. Again the government there has given the industry an amnesty – this time until the end of 2012 – to get its act together. The new law sees no distinction between first and third party cookies. This means that even websites using Google analytics will need permission from users to set the cookie. It means re-targeting is completely out of question – as is the use of social tools. And you can forget about third party ad serving. It would seem contextual advertising is back. Let’s target like it’s 1999. Wooooh.

Am I Breaking The Law If I Serve A Cookie To A Dutch User From A Site Outside The Netherlands?

The first question most people asked in private conversations around the fringes of the IAB event was whether sites outside the Netherlands that drop cookies on users with Dutch IPs are exempt from the law. The answer is: Yes. As long as your content isn’t in Dutch you can drop as many first and third party cookies as you want – just as long as you comply to the laws of the country you are based in. This is a potential disaster for the Dutch digital media industry: it has effectively put in place a huge commercial disadvantage on the companies based there. There is already speculation over whether or not some of the native and international ad tech vendors will keep their data centres there given that the new Dutch law would cover their activity across Europe.

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